Helen Boehm

Who was Helen Boehm?

Helen Boehm was an American businesswoman who played a pivotal role in promoting the ceramic sculptures created by her husband Edward Marshall Boehm, earning her the nickname the "Princess of Porcelain". A luncheon invitation from First Lady Mamie Eisenhower helped make Boehm's designs a standard gift from U.S. Presidents to foreign dignitaries.

She was born as Elena Francesca Stephanie Franzolin in 1920 to immigrants from Italy, and was raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. She began working as a teenager following the death of her father, later studying to become an optician. After she qualified for grinding and fitting prescription glasses, she landed a job with Manhattan's leading optical firm, E.B. Myerowitz.

She married Edward Marshall Boehm, a veterinary assistant who raised livestock and created sculptures of animals in his spare time, in 1944. Helen Boehm borrowed money from one of her customers and used the funds to help her husband devote his time to his art at what was originally called E.M. Boehm Studios, located in the basement of their home in Trenton, New Jersey, founded in 1950.